Thanksgiving was not a day of unalloyed happiness to Elizabeth. The
afternoon's mail brought her letters and papers from Bitumen. Her father
wrote the home news with the same gaiety which marked his conversation. He
mentioned, as though it were a subject to be lightly treated, that there
was some talk of the miners "going out." He thought their grievance might
be adjusted without resorting to extreme measures--a week or so would
tell. Then he took up the little matters of the house.

The letter was remarkably cheerful. Yet Elizabeth was disturbed in spirit.
She had never lived through a strike; but she had heard the miners' wives
tell of the dreadful happenings. So far she thought only of the suffering
of the miners' families, with no money, starving and freezing in their
little shanties. She had never heard how the lives of the operators and
men in the position of her father hung in the balance at such times.

After reading the letter again, she mechanically took up the newspaper.
The black headlines heralding the coming strike were before her. She read
column after column hurriedly. The newspaper attached greater importance
to the rumors than her father. They recounted the horrors of strikes past,
and presaged them for strikes to come. No definite reasons had been given
for the miners going out. The article hinted that only the grossest
imposition of the operators had led them to consider a strike. The names
of two men appeared frequently--Dennis O'Day and Ratowsky--who were
opposed to each other. Strange to say, neither was a miner. Ratowsky could
influence the men because he was foreign-born, a Pole, as the majority of
them were. On the other hand, Dennis O'Day was a native American, a class
of which the foreign element is suspicious. Yet at his instigation the
miners had arisen.

The article caused Elizabeth some uneasiness. She looked forward to the
following day's paper, hoping it might contain a brighter outlook. But on
the next day when she went to the reading room, she failed to find the
papers. For many successive days the same thing occurred. Then at length,
she gave up looking for them. It was not until a month later that she
learned that they had disappeared at Dr. Morgan's suggestion, and the
girls were aiding her in keeping the worrisome news from Elizabeth.

The letters from home came at their usual times, but neither her father
nor mother mentioned the trouble at the mines. Elizabeth, believing that